City of Tiny Lights

Riz Ahmed stars here as a rough, tough private investigator who walks the film noir-like mean streets, not of Los Angeles or Chicago, but of London. A seemingly simple assignment to find a missing Russian prostitute lands him in an unholy mess of murder, political chicanery and radical Islam, with Billie Piper playing an old flame from his past. The film is slickly made and is undeniably ambitious in its bid to transpose an intrinsically American genre to a British setting and by reflecting contemporary concerns about religious radicalism. However, director Pete Travis (Dredd) is probably a little too intent on hard-boiling the story, which has a few too many layers and flashbacks. But, for all its faults, City of Tiny Lights is a strong and enjoyable bit of Brit-noir with an impressive leading man in Ahmed.